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04/26/2015

Watercolor Butterflies!

Hi there my sweet crafty friends! And, welcome to lots of new friends! Lots of traffic here on my blog because of the blog hop that started on Friday! There is still time to leave a comment on my last post for a chance to win a prize package from Simon Says Stamp! Um, excuse me, but as of the last time I checked, I had SEVEN HUNDRED comments! OMG - seriously!? Thank you to every single person who took the time to leave me a note. I read ALL OF THEM and they make me smile...so thank you!

Did you have a nice weekend? I had a great weekend! Just the right mix of husband time, chores time and crafty time. The only thing I didn't get was nap time! LOL. Today I start a new schedule at work and I have to be at work at seven am. Yeah, that's no good at all. I am a stay-up-until-sunrise kind of gal, not the get-up-at-sunrise kind of gal. This week is going to be hard while I adjust. I would say no one better talk to me at work unless they are talking about coffee. Ugh.

I have a really cool project to share with you today. I was up late Saturday night in the studio making these cards. SO.MUCH.FUN. I was one hundred percent inspired by THIS BLOG POST by the super talented (and also super sweet) Jill Foster. Her water coloring is amazeballs. I admire her so much. So, with full credit to her for this idea - I water colored some butterflies! I hope I will inspire you to try this. The results are so great...and if I can do it, you can too!

I ended up with three that I liked and my favorite one is this orange one with the pink background. Ooh la la. Here is the trio of cards. Keep reading for a tutorial.

So we all know that I can't free form paint a butterfly! So I started by making a mask/stencil from a large Memory Box Butterfly Die. Here you see I've taped it down at an angle onto my water color paper.

Using your mask, take your water color paints and paint inside the outline. I used gold, yellow and orange for this one. Doesn't have to be perfect! Tip: take a clean brush with water and wet your paper first. This makes your colors blend nicely.

Here is my finished butterfly, after I've dried it with my heat tool. This is a very important step - dry your piece!! (Before doing your background)

I used aqua to make my background around my butterfly and dark brown for some splatters and splotches at the end. Tip: water and paint will not flow onto dry paper. This is why it's important to dry the butterfly before starting the background. I took a brush with plain water and drenched the paper around the butterfly, close but not touching, the edges. Then I took my paint and let it run all over and 'do its thing." Dry your background before adding the splatters so that they stay crisp and don't run into the other colors.

Now when you're all done your paper will be very crinkly and wrinkly! Not to worry. I am super OCD so I have a solution! Tip: iron your paper! Yes, with your regular iron! Get it nice and hot. Place a piece of plain white cardstock over your piece and iron it flat. Yay!

In this photo you can see my tiny edge of white in between my butterfly and my background.

For the next one I used yellow, orange and hot pink!

Here is one of the finished cards! I added a pretty sentiment from Simon Says Stamp in crisp black ink and then mounted my panel onto a kraft card base. Just kept everything very clean and simple. This one has black splatters instead of brown.

This one is blue, yellow and green...

And here's the card from the tutorial butterfly...

So I say "get out those paintbrushes" and give this a try! You will love making these - I know I did! I use these watercolors: Kuretake Zig 36 They are super dense and richly pigmented. The colors are awesome and they even have silver and gold metallic.

Stunning cards Wanda, absolutely beautiful! I have just found out today that I was your SSS Blog hop winner. I know my comment was selected randomly but I still wanted to express my gratitude to you. Thank you so much and have a great day! :)

Pretty cards. I've made similar watercolor butterflies using a stamp and distress ink so I can incorporate the "edges" into the watercolor--works every time. I tape my watercolor pieces to a board to prevent warping and then trim off the edges when done (my iron doesn't see much action).
Sorry you have to start work earlier--hope that means you get off earlier.